


Us Against Consensus

by whythis



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Minor Octavia Blake/Lincoln, Modern AU, Vigilante AU, Vigilante Lexa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-05-29 02:03:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6354403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whythis/pseuds/whythis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke Griffin is an ER doctor struggling to reconcile her commitment to medicine with a hobby she thinks might be her real calling. Lexa Woods is a tabloid-fodder partygirl CEO with a dangerous secret. One night while Clarke's taking a break on the hospital roof, a local vigilante the press has begun calling The Commander shows up needing her help. Together, they just might save their beloved city, or burn it to the ground.</p><p>It's a sort of partly-Daredevil/Batman-inspired AU with shades of other vigilante stories, too. There will be blood, but nobody we care about will die. More characters/tags will be added later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. don't fight me now 'cause you might need me later

Clarke lifted her hair up into a ponytail with both hands, letting the cool evening breeze dry the sweat on the nape of her neck as she rolled the elastic off her wrist. Her original one had broken in the middle of a code blue and she hadn’t had a moment to breathe since. She hadn’t even been able to shove her hair back behind her ears at the time, what with her hands covered in some biker’s blood, and she made a mental note to double-tie next time just in case.

Things at the hospital had been like this all week. Every night after dark, the sirens would begin and Clarke and her colleagues geared up for another batch of broken bones, knife wounds, and even—she swore, though Raven scoffed—sword slashes. The vigilante the papers had begun calling The Commander had been on a rampage, and the ones that made it into Clarke’s ER were the lucky ones.

Hair finally secured, she leaned forward against the low wall at the roof’s edge until her forearms rested on concrete and closed her eyes, letting the sounds of the city filter up from below. Clarke had always found its noise calming and this was perfect—far enough that there was no picking out individual conversations to distract her, but near enough to just let the low, constant hum of it wash over her and slowly dull the buzzing of her own nerves. Maybe it was just because she’d grown up here, and something deep in her subconscious remembered the muffled sounds of traffic as a lullaby, but everywhere else had always seemed too quiet.

As the adrenaline faded the exhaustion began to creep in in its place, and Clarke let her head droop and her shoulders relax, easing the tension out as much as she could, pushing her feet back to turn it into a stretch. After a thirty hour shift she would have liked to go home to bed, but she was due in surgery in half an hour. Even if she hadn’t been, she knew sleep would never really have been her next stop anyway.

This week wasn’t the first time her job had conflicted with her “hobby,” but it was definitely the most difficult instance yet. She needed to be out there, was itching to get to work, her mind consumed with ideas and plans, and every moment spent stitching up a wound for some thug who wouldn’t stop running his mouth about her tits brought Clarke closer and closer to throwing in the towel. Medicine was great, but it felt less and less like her true calling. But she was still scheduled for surgery in half an hour, and she wasn’t prepared to bail on people who were counting on her tonight.

She had expected to be left alone until then, so a thump on the other side of the roof surprised her. She hadn’t heard the door open, and nobody else ever came up here. The A-wing roof was the unofficially-designated smoking area, and everyone else preferred the B-wing, because the extra ten stories were enough to get some real quiet. D had the best people-watching, looking directly into a block of high-rise apartment buildings across the street. Nobody bothered with C but Clarke. She’d even encouraged a rumor that there was a serious pigeon problem in order to keep it that way. But there wasn’t, and so she turned with narrowed eyes to begin circling around the water tank and pump housings to see who—or what—was up here with her.

Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t The Commander.

She recognized the flash of red and the shape of the dark coat in the moment before the figure stumbled and then crumpled before her eyes, and any hesitation Clarke had felt vanished. She sprinted over, and any lingering wariness that this was some sort of trick or trap was assuaged by the sight of a knife still sticking out of the vigilante’s side. The Commander’s outfit was all black except for that sash thing, but the sodium lights overhead made the blood stain gleam wetly, and Clarke could see that it already extended over half her abdomen.

This close she could even see pale skin around the greasepaint that concealed her features. _Her_. There had been conflicting reports and some debate in the press, but everyone had basically agreed that of course the Commander was a man, and though Clarke had rolled her eyes at that she was embarrassed to find that she too was surprised that the unconscious woman before her was a woman at all. But that was a thought for a later time, and way down the long list of questions she would have as soon as the Commander woke up. First, she needed to ensure that she ever did.

Clarke carefully rolled her flat on her back and pushed open her coat, shifting around so her own shadow wasn’t in the way of her light. She considered using the woman’s own sash but God only knew what kind of grime was on that thing, so with a grumble she stripped off her white coat, turned it inside out, and folded it up to press carefully to the wound to slow the bleeding as she did a cursory examination. The knife wasn’t as large as its hilt made it look, and the angle was such that it probably hadn’t hit anything major, but she wouldn’t know until she either got her down to imaging or pulled it out herself.

Here, Clarke hesitated again. She knew what she ought to do as a doctor, but she also had a feeling she knew what the Commander would have wanted if she’d been awake enough to be asked. Technically it was just a guess and that wasn’t really the standard, legally or ethically, and besides, this woman had killed and injured dozens of people in the last few days alone, what did Clarke care what she wanted? What did Clarke care if she got arrested? She probably should be. For all Clarke knew, she was a murderous lunatic.

Except that wasn’t really all Clarke knew, was it? She’d seen firsthand the damage the Commander could do, but she’d also seen who she was doing it to. These weren’t random attacks and they weren’t on good people. In all the chaos and carnage of the last few days, Clarke had seen exactly one civilian who had been caught in the crossfire, and that couldn’t have been easy. That required planning, and care. And _caring_. It would have been far easier to go in guns blazing and just take these guys out _en masse_ and say to hell with collateral damage, but the Commander hadn’t done that. Clarke still might not entirely agree with her methods, which should have involved turning these guys over to the police for prosecution instead of mass murder, but—. But.

But she could understand the impulse. She could understand getting fed up with watching what the gangs and the cartels and the mobs were doing to Polis. She could understand being sickened by the rot that was eating the city from the inside out, the corruption and greed that prevented the city’s so-called leaders from doing anything to stop it. She could understand the rage that built up and built up watching people die of violence and overdoses and poverty until that rage threatened to consume you and you had to do something. She would’ve done it differently, but that didn’t mean she was prepared to turn the woman in and let her face a dozen lifetimes in prison for seeing and feeling and trying to fix what most people in the city couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Clarke lifted the coat from the wound, refolding it to find a patch that wasn’t saturated with blood. She pressed it down again, and reached up to pat the Commander’s cheek, gently at first and then harder.

“Hey, wake up. Wake up. Commander, I need you to wake up. If you don’t wake up I can’t go get my kit and without my kit I can’t save your life. And I think you came here because you’d like someone to save your life. I think you’ve got more work to do. Come on, Commander. That’s it, flutter those absurdly long eyelashes and wake the hell up before you bleed out and ruin my favorite roof.”

A hand shot up and locked around Clarke’s wrist, holding her back just short of touching the woman’s cheek again. Clarke probably should have been afraid, but couldn’t help smirking.

“Good, you’re back. Now let go of my wrist and put pressure on this wound.”

The woman’s grip was tight, and probably strong enough to bruise, but it eased immediately when she got her eyes open and managed to blink them into focusing. Clarke was surprised to discover they were green and wondered if it was just the yellowy sodium lighting making them look that shade. Another question she didn’t have time for.

“Who are you?” The Commander’s voice was hoarse, gruff in a way that seemed forced, and she reached up to tug her hood down further to shadow her face.

“I’m a doctor, I work here. You’re at Polis General, remember? I assume you chose this roof to collapse on on purpose.”

“I didn’t— I need to go.” She started to move, to curl up into a sit, and then gasped at the pain. Clarke pushed her shoulders back down.

“Yeah, there’s a knife sticking out of you, remember? You’re incredibly lucky that it probably didn’t hit anything vital, but if you keep moving around I can’t promise your luck will hold.”

“I need to go,” the woman said again, her jaw clenching as she turned her face away. Clarke bet that was at least as much from pain as stubbornness. The black paint that dripped down her face distracted from the line of her jaw, but this expression highlighted it, and Clarke found herself itching to sketch her profile. She couldn’t easily make out cheekbones with all the black and the lighting, but she supposed asking her to move just so she could get a better angle would probably not go over well and might even violate the Hippocratic Oath, which was the one rule she wasn’t already in the process of breaking tonight. She sighed.

“Look, if you try to get up and walk away right now, your chances of surviving the night are slim to none.” Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but whatever. If that was what it took to get her to listen to reason, it was worth it. “You’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re going to keep losing it, and even if you somehow manage to make it home before you faint again, which is extremely unlikely, when that blade comes out you’re going to lose even more blood and without someone to help keep pressure on it and stitch it up for you after you lose consciousness, you will bleed out and die. Got it? So just lie back, put your hand here,” she picked up the hand that had been holding her wrist and placed it on the makeshift bandage covering the wound, “and hold pressure there until I get back with my kit. Argue with me again and I’ll call the police, and they can follow the trail of blood and your dumb ass can get stitched up in jail instead.”

The woman had clearly been about to argue, but her teeth snapped shut with a click at Clarke’s threat. She glared up at the doctor, and despite the fact that she was white as a sheet under her paint and lying flat on her back where she'd fallen, Clarke had to admit that with the whole outfit and the fierce light in her eyes, she could see how criminals would find this woman terrifying.

Clarke smiled tightly. “That’s what I thought. I’ll be right back.”

It took a few minutes longer than she’d hoped to wash up, gather up the things she needed, hide them in the folded up bundle of her spare coat, and sneak back up to the roof. Long enough that Clarke wondered if the woman would even still be there. She braced herself for disappointment as she opened the door, sure she would find the Commander vanished back into the night with only the drying puddle of her blood to prove she’d ever been there at all. She was pleasantly surprised to be wrong.

The Commander wasn’t lying right where Clarke had left her but she hadn’t gone far, just scooted over into the shadow of the wall, and Clarke couldn’t manage to be too annoyed about that even though she’d told her not to move. The woman had no way of knowing, like Clarke did, that nobody else ever came up here, so making herself less conspicuous was pretty reasonable all things considered.

“It’s just me,” she said, seeing from here the way the woman tensed at the noise of the door opening and shutting behind her, like she was ready to jump up and fight. Clarke wondered if she’d pull the knife out of her own side like a sheath and fight with it if she had to. The image was absurd, but somehow seemed to fit the ferocity of the Commander’s image. She wondered how much that image really fit the woman beneath it, who relaxed when it became clear that Clarke was alone, and started inching back out into the light.

“Wait, wait, let me help you,” Clarke said, hurrying over and setting her things down, spreading out the sheet she’d brought. The Commander clearly was not a fan of the idea of being helped but Clarke didn’t ask for permission before lifting her. It was surprisingly easy and Clarke carried her the few steps, placing her carefully down on the fabric. The Commander probably wasn’t more than an inch or two taller than she was, Clarke realized, and there wasn’t as much bulk to her as the outfit made it seem. She wondered why she kept assuming that fighting criminals required being some giant muscle-bound dude when she of all people should know that sort of thing was misogynistic bullshit.

The Commander was breathing through grit teeth, her chest rising and falling shallowly, like she was trying to keep from breathing too hard. Her hood had fallen back when Clarke carried her, and now Clarke could see beads of sweat at her hairline. She needed to get this knife out and blood in, and soon.

“Okay, I need you to take these.” Clarke rattled open two prescription bottles and bounced a pair of pills into her palm. “One is an antibiotic, one is for the pain. Don’t worry,” she held up a hand to fend off argument, “It’s not very strong. It won’t do much more than take the edge off, but I assumed you’d rather not get loopy and I wasn’t about to risk my license stealing oxy for you anyway.”

She started to hand them over, but the woman’s hand was bloody, so instead she reached up to her mouth to offer them directly. The Commander hesitated, and the tilt of her brows was easily read as annoyed despite the paint on her face, but after a moment she gave in and took them from Clarke’s fingertips, careful to keep the contact to a minimum while Clarke kicked herself for suddenly noticing how full and soft the woman’s lips were. Probably just swollen, she told herself. She cracked open a bottle of water next and held that up, and this time it was the long line of the woman’s throat she noticed as the quick sip to wash down the pills was followed by a couple long, thirsty gulps. Thirsty was definitely the word of the moment, and Clarke rolled her eyes at herself internally and resolved to get back to business.

“I’m going to have to cut your shirt so I can get to the wound,” Clarke explained as she began to do just that, scissors snipping easily through the thin fabric. She’d have thought a badass vigilante might have some sort of kevlar or something, at least, but this looked like Under Armor. She resisted the urge to comment, and then had to do so again when she peeled the ruined shirt back to reveal not just the wound but also a set of very tightly clenched and well-defined abdominal muscles. It wasn’t the first time she’d had an attractive patient and she forced herself, again, to focus.

“I’ll apply a topical anesthetic, but when I take the knife out it’s going to hurt, and you’ll probably pass out. That’s not a statement on your strength or badass-ness,” she added with a real roll of her eyes this time as the woman cut a glare her way, “Between the pain and the blood loss without the knife to plug the wound, you just will. I’ll stop the bleeding and stitch it up, and set you up with an IV and as much blood as I can to replace what you’ve lost. But I have to be in surgery in twenty minutes, so while I think you’ll probably wake up before that, if you wake up and I’m not here, that’s where I went.”

She lifted her head and made eye contact, fixing the Commander with a stern and serious gaze. “I am going to urge you as strongly as I can to please wait here until I get back. That is my recommendation as a medical professional. But I have a feeling the chances of that are minimal, so _please_ listen closely. If you go, take the pills with you. The pain pills you can take as needed but no more than six in 24 hours. Take one of the antibiotics every twelve hours for the next week. If there is any redness, swelling, pus, a weird smell, anything unusual, please come back. Don’t wait until you’re septic and collapsing again. The stitches should stay in for at least ten days and you shouldn’t be doing anything strenuous in that time anyway. Please be careful and let this heal properly.”

She held eye contact for a moment longer, and the Commander didn’t try to break it yet. Those big green(? blue? hazel?) eyes looked back at her, serious and attentive, but they both knew this advice probably wasn’t going to get followed. Clarke sighed and the other woman looked away, with the good grace to at least look chagrined and a little apologetic.

“Yeah, fine. Do whatever you want.” Clarke grumbled as she squeezed the numbing agent onto a gloved fingertip and smeared it around the wound, less gently than she probably should have. The Commander’s teeth clenched and she put her head back against the floor, but said nothing. Clarke took another, closer look at the knife, readied her supplies, and then laid her palm flat against the woman’s side around where it jutted up from her skin. “On the count of three. One. Two.” She pulled early, and carefully drew the blade upwards. It wasn’t quite like ripping off a band-aid, she couldn’t move that fast, and the woman hissed in pain and bit her lip. Blood welled as the thickest part of the knife was removed, and began to cascade down her side by the time Clarke got it all the way out.

She dropped the weapon on the sheet and pressed sterile gauze to the wound with both hands. She glanced up and saw the Commander’s eyes closed, lids twitching like she was fighting to stay awake and losing. She wasn’t sure why she felt such an urge to reassure this stubborn asshole vigilante who’d barely said two words to her and definitely wasn’t going to thank her by following her instructions. But she did.

“You’re okay,” she said softly, moving her top hand to lay it briefly on the woman’s stomach, where every muscle was impossibly tense. She knew bloody latex probably wasn’t _that_ soothing, but it was the best she could do and she let her hand rest, firm and warm, and hoped that was enough. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Just relax for me, please. This’ll go quicker if you do.” She felt the woman take a deep breath and let it out slowly, and the tension under her hand eased a little along with the tight clench of her neck and jaw. “Good. That’s good. You’re doing great. I’m just going to put something on this to help stop the bleeding and then sew it up for you.”

The bleeding had already begun to slow, which was a good sign, and as the woman lapsed into unconsciousness as predicted, Clarke carefully cleansed the wound, swapped in clean gauze, and changed her gloves to prepare for sutures. While the wound was deep it wasn’t very long, and Clarke had it stitched up in no time and covered with protective bandages. All that left was getting blood and fluids back into her. She pushed the woman’s sleeve up above her elbow and found a vein, setting up an IV by balancing the bag above her on the sidewall of the roof.

Blood was the tricky part, and Clarke still wasn’t sure this was a good idea—in fact she was pretty sure it was a _terrible_ idea—but if she could get a pint back into the woman she’d feel a lot better about her inevitable against-medical-advice departure. There was no use debating with herself any further when she knew she’d already made up her mind.

She set up the tubing, prepared another needle, and rolled up her sleeve.

“What are you doing?”

She was surprised to find the woman awake already and looking at her with wary eyes. “You need blood and I’m not stealing from the bank downstairs.”

“Are you—”

Clarke cut her off with an incredulous laugh, brows lifted and arched. “Are you seriously about to ask me if I’m clean? I’m afraid you’ll just have to take my word for it. I don’t exactly carry a certificate around in my pocket in case I need to donate blood to strange women on rooftops.”

“I was going to ask your blood type.”

“Oh.” Clarke felt a little bad about her harangue, and a little flustered by the faint hint of a smile around the woman’s mouth, like she felt bad but was amused anyway. “And— O. It’s O. Positive. Unless you’ve got something fairly rare, but I assumed if you did you’d—”

“I don’t.”

“Okay. Good.”

They looked at each other for another moment before Clarke drew her eyes away and back to her arm. She found a vein, cleared the line, and hooked it up to the one in the Commander’s elbow, then sat herself up on the edge of the wall to let gravity help the process.

“I can probably give you about a pint before I need to leave,” Clarke said. “That plus the fluids should get you through.” Should get her back on her feet, she’d been about to say, but Clarke didn’t want to be too encouraging if there was any hope at all that the woman might take it easy for a couple days.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’m a doctor. This is my job.”

“You could have called the police. Or told someone downstairs.”

She could have. Clarke didn’t have a quick response for that, even though maybe she should have. Something snappy and vague would’ve been nice. Instead she watched as her blood slowly pumped down into the other woman’s body, and considered how to explain, and if she even wanted to. A part of her was tempted. Maybe it was just the pain and the blood loss, but the woman was so quiet and serious, in a way that didn’t quite fit with the havoc the Commander had been wreaking through the city’s criminal population. It made Clarke want to know more. But knowing more should begin with _knowing more_ , not with giving up more information about herself. So she settled on the truth, but less of it.

“I don’t approve of everything you’re doing, but I’m not ready to send you to prison for fifteen consecutive life sentences, either.”

The woman nodded. Clarke checked her watch. Five minutes, and then she had to go. Time for a question or two.

“Why are _you_ doing _this_?” she asked. She had a feeling she knew the answer, but maybe that was more like a hope, or maybe she was just projecting. It’d be nice to hear how the woman put it in her own words. Maybe it’d give Clarke a better sense of who she was dealing with, and whether she was wasting her blood and risking her job on a psycho.

The woman swallowed to wet her mouth before she spoke. One shoulder twitched upwards in a suggestion of a shrug. “Someone had to.”

Clarke arched a brow at her, like is that it? She got a dry look in reply, but the woman continued. “If you’re capable of fixing a problem but choose not to then you’re no better than the people who caused it to begin with.”

“Is that important to you? Being better than people.” Clarke deliberately misunderstood, wanting to see how she responded to being needled.

The woman rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant.” She sounded a little exasperated, but not angry. At least not at Clarke. “But yes. Being better than the scum that are letting this city tear itself to pieces while they line their own pockets is important to me.”

“That’s a pretty low bar. You could’ve just donated to United Way or refrained from kicking puppies or giving heroin to children.” She’d meant it to be humor, but too much of Clarke’s own bitterness at the state of things in Polis crept in, and the look the woman gave her quickly melted from flat disapproval to something alarmingly like sympathy. Alarming because of how soft and sad it made the woman’s eyes, and what that did to Clarke’s heart rate. She looked down at her watch again.

“I have to go.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not going to bother telling you again not to leave because I know you’re not going to listen, but please at least wait until you’ve gotten the other half of this bag,” she tapped the fluids, “into you. And please take it easy for a couple days. But if you ignore everything else I have said please at the very least take the antibiotics.”

“I will.”

Clarke gave her a skeptical look, and the woman raised a hand, palm out. “I know where that knife has been. I’m not _completely_ insane.”

“Okay. Good.”

When the last of the blood had been drawn into her arm Clarke removed the needles and the tubing and put it all in the bio-hazard bag she’d brought along with the gauze and gloves and her original jacket. She gathered up the supplies she could take back and hid them in her coat again, before drawing out a couple small square packets she tossed onto the woman’s chest.

“Here.”

“Condoms?”

Clarke laughed. “Wet wipes. You should clean your face and hands before you leave. You’re covered in blood and someone’s going to recognize that makeup.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Clarke just nodded, and took stock of the scene she was leaving behind, eyes lingering on the Commander herself. She already knew she was going to draw her later, and wanted to make sure she got the planes and angles of that face just right. The strong jaw, the cheekbones and brow she couldn't quite figure out, obscured as they were beneath her paint mask, that bottom lip that she now had to admit was just the result of good genes and not injury after all. It was strange how effective the black war paint was as a disguise, somehow breaking her features up into individual pieces and making it difficult for Clarke to fit them all together into a coherent face. She’d gotten closer to her for longer than probably anyone who’d lived to tell the tale and she still wasn’t sure she’d be able to recognize the woman if she ran into her on the street in normal clothes. Which was a shame, because Clarke had a sneaking suspicion that the Commander might be beautiful.

She realized she was staring. “Anyway. Bye. Be careful.”

The woman’s smile was faint, a little curl up at one corner of her lips, but it felt like a secret shared. This wasn’t a woman who smiled often, but now Clarke knew what that looked like. She smiled in response, as much to herself as to the other woman, and turned to go.

“Ck--Doctor—” She sounded like she’d caught herself by surprised, first making an odd noise and then cutting herself off from whatever the next word was going to be.

Clarke turned to look back, concerned. Maybe she’d been wrong about internal damage after all? “What is it?”

“Thank you.” The Commander had that serious look back on her face again, but her voice was surprisingly soft and Clarke felt like this, too, was something a little bit special. “Thank you for doing this.”

Clarke held her eyes for another long moment, and then bobbed her head in a nod. “You’re welcome.” 

* * *

 A three-hour surgery became five, with an hour of debrief and wrap-up, collecting the IV bag from the roof (empty! She considered that a small victory.), a long enough subway ride that she should have just hailed a cab, and by the time Clarke got home she almost fell face-first into her own apartment because she’d forgotten she was leaning her entire weight against the front door as she turned the key in the lock.

Despite all of it, the first place she went after she’d stripped out of scrubs and washed the last day and a half out of her hair wasn’t her bed but her desk. The yellow-orange glow of the street lamps through her curtains was light enough to sketch out everything she’d been holding tight in her mind all evening, and she covered pages with the Commander’s jaw, her eyes, the length of her throat, the odd buckle on her coat, the dripping wingspan of her mask, the flat plane of her stomach smeared with blood, her face tight with pain or gone slack in unconsciousness. Just as she’d feared, she struggled to pull the face together on the page just as she did in her mind. She could get her nose right here, and her eyes right there, those lips right there, and there, and there, but somehow when she tried to draw her face as a whole it was never quite right. After too many attempts crumpled on the floor she settled for the best composite she could manage and set her pencil down. She yawned as she stretched, and crossed her loft to the closet.

Hangers jangled as she pushed them aside and opened up the cupboard behind. She stuck her two best sketches of the Commander—both with and without her paint shaded in—to the inside of the door, and nodded to herself.

She was glad to be a doctor, glad to be able to make a difference in peoples’ lives that way, and maybe she wasn’t ready to give it up altogether, but maybe it was time to talk about cutting back her hours at the hospital for the next few weeks, at least. A test run, to see if she could find a way to better balance her commitments and her interests. Her hobby wasn’t really _just_ a hobby, after all, and while that realization had been simmering for a while it had boiled over tonight, and Clarke felt more sure than she ever had before that it was something she needed to pursue.

‘ _Besides_ ,’ she thought, as she turned from the sketch on the locker door to her own suit and mask that hung within, ‘ _I just might have found a partner_.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want, comment and tell me if the end was a surprise at all. I tried to plant seeds of that throughout but also wanted it to kind of seem like the hobby stuff was just about art, because Clarke liking medicine but really wanting to be an artist is such a popular storyline. I'm curious if I was too obvious about it or if it was successfully a twist.


	2. if i fall short

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa does her best Bruce Wayne, Clarke does her best Robin Hood, and they spiral closer to meeting without masks while Raven provides banter and moral support.

The roof of the SUV thumped and groaned beneath Clarke’s feet as she landed, and she realized that she hadn’t completely thought this through. There were three men all staring up at her, mouths open and eyes wide. One held a dufflebag in his arms, and its sides drooped open to show the neatly-bundled cash within. These things were both good. Less good were the facts that she was exposed, an easy target up above them, and that the back of the car was packed with weapons and ammunition all in their easy reach. Worst of all, she still hadn’t come up with a good answer to the inevitable question:

“Who the _fuck_ are you?”

If she was going to keep doing this she really needed to figure out a name.

More immediate concerns prevented Clarke from following through on that. (They always did, that was the problem.) She closed the two paces between her position and the back of the car at a run, stomping hard on the lifted lid of the trunk as she reached it, forcing it to drop closed and riding it down to ground level. She nearly caught one of the men beneath it and he had to lurch awkwardly aside, stumbling over his own feet as the trunk edge clonked the back of his skull. Clarke slid off and kicked it shut the rest of the way, cutting off access to the guns before they could cause her real trouble.

One of the other men, a squat, flat-faced guy barely taller than her swung a punch down low at her gut and as Clarke blocked it he came close enough that she could smell the sweet stench of cheap cigarettes still clinging to his tracksuit. She slammed a knee between his legs with a satisfying whump of impact and when he teetered backwards, curling in on himself like a dying insect, she delivered an upper-cutting palm strike to his chin that put him the rest of the way onto the ground.

There was no time to enjoy the strangled gasping noise of pain Smoker made because the third man—Neck Tattoo, for the ugly faux-tribal mess jutting up his throat—had dropped the dufflebag and was advancing on her, growling what she knew without needing to speak Russian were curses and threats. Clarke raised her fists and went to meet him, attacking with a flurry of punches and kicks rather than giving him a chance to strike first. She struck at the sides of his knees and jabbed at his ribs, but Neck Tattoo was more skilled than the other two, and bigger, and Clarke had to grit her teeth as her forearm soaked up a powerful blow meant for her head. She wouldn’t be able to take many hits like that, and she made a mental note to bulk up the armoring.

What Neck Tattoo had in size and power, though, Clarke made up for in agility and quick thinking. The great bulk of his muscles beneath his too-tight shirt telegraphed his movements even in the gloom beneath the overpass, and she ducked the next punch altogether, snuck up under it, and unleashed a brutal combination right at his diaphragm, fists pounding into flesh through the thin satin of his shiny button-down.

It should have been brutal, anyway. But apparently Neck Tat was one of those guys from action movies, so large and muscle-bound that the hero does their worst and they just stare down and watch it happen, bemused. True to cliche, he barely grunted at Clarke’s attack, but in this case ‘bemused’ looked a lot like ‘homicidal’ and she darted back out of reach just in time to avoid being caught by one of his heavy fists. Unfortunately, she backed straight into the arms of the first guy (Trunk Head; if Clarke couldn’t name herself she wasn’t going to put in any more effort for them) who had by now regained his feet.

Trunk Head locked his arms around her, clearly intending to hold her still for Neck Tat to finish off. Clarke had other ideas, and they did not involve getting punched by a hand the size of an Easter ham and having to try to explain to her friends why she had either missed their party in the hospital or showed up with half her face black and blue and imprinted with the outlines of several gaudy rings. (Or she might not get to explain at all if they killed her, a tiny voice reminded her. She shoved it down. Being aware of her own mortality was all well and good but fear of death didn’t help in moments like this.)

She made herself look caught, barely struggling against Trunk Head’s restraint, slumping shoulders, letting them think they’d got her. Then as soon as Neck Tat was in range Clarke used the hold on her arms for leverage and added height, kicking up off the ground to drive her foot into Neck Tat’s head. He might have been built like a brick wall, but even he couldn’t brush off a heavy boot to the jaw, and he dropped hard. Clarke took her momentum into a crouch and flipped Trunk Head off of her, ripping herself free of his grip and onto the ground in front of her where he was vulnerable to a left cross hard enough to leave him groaning in confusion rather than getting back up.

She dug zip ties out of a pocket and trussed them up quickly, hands and feet bound, face down on the asphalt. She brushed grit and broken glass off her own knees and gloved palms as she straightened up, surveying her handiwork. This had gone quicker and cleaner than last time. She was getting better.

“You’re not the Commander,” Smoker grumbled, watching as she collected the dufflebag full of cash, zipping it up and hauling the straps up onto her shoulder.

“No, what gave it away,” Clarke’s reply was dry as dust but he failed to pick up on the sarcasm. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised.

“Too short. Too boobs. What’re you, some kinda wannabe?” He spat a gob of bloody phlegm onto the street. “His little girlfriend?”

Clarke rolled her eyes. She wondered how he could fail to notice that belittling her was just making himself look bad for getting busted by her. “Ask Jimmy Ratko and his boys if I’m just a wannabe.”

The man squirmed as she stepped over him, trying to get eyes on her. Clarke straightened her hood and the dark mask over her eyes. “You workin’ with Ratko? That little piece of—”

“No. I took out Ratko.”

“What? No.”

“Yes.” Clarke knew she shouldn’t be so exasperated; this was not something worth feeling insulted about and a low profile was better, anyway. She’d intentionally tried to stay out of the spotlight, but his disbelief still rankled. She’d just taken out him and his two goon friends in less than five minutes, without a weapon. What’d a girl have to do to get people to take her seriously? She patted his pockets, dug out a shitty little flip phone and flopped it open.

“No way, Jimmy got popped by the Commander, everybody knows that. I heard it from his brother myself.”

“It wasn’t the C— you know what, fine. You can just tell everybody this was the Commander too.”

“What?”

“This. Anybody asks you how you got caught, you just tell them it was the Commander. Better than getting your asses kicked by some girl wannabe, right?”

She didn’t give him a chance to answer, hitting the key to send an emergency call. When she’d heard the operator pick up she dropped it just out of the man’s reach, and walked away.

* * *

Lexa stood in front of the full-length mirror in her underwear and pressed her fingers into her oblique muscle until the pain made her wince. It took longer than it had the day before, but the fact that it hurt at all was frustrating. It had been almost two weeks since she’d been stabbed, and she was ready for the healing process to be over with. She had even tried to follow Clarke’s instructions, at least some of them. For the first week. She’d taken two entire days off, which was far more than she could really afford with the current state of things. She’d even considered taking a third before she’d learned that the Colombians planned to attack a supposedly-secret prisoner transport. She’d ripped out half her stitches that night and come perilously close to needing to return to the hospital, but making sure Eduardo Calderon didn’t escape justice had been more important.

She’d replaced the stitches as best she could and she ran her fingertips over the thread now, the criss-cross of her work and then the neat, perfectly-spaced stitches Clarke had made. She was pleased to find that the skin beneath was no longer so tender. She could probably take them out tomorrow, but had attempted to be patient with at least this one bit of advice the doctor had given her. (This and the antibiotics. She hadn’t been kidding about that knife. She’d seen the thug who’d stabbed her use it to pick his fingernails when she’d been surveilling the place and she shuddered to imagine where he might have put his fingers.)

She was still running her fingers back and forth over the stitches as she moved away from the mirror, but she made herself stop and turn away to collect the dress she’d chosen. There was fashionably late, and then there was late enough to seem careless and mildly rude, and then there was so late that she’d never be forgiven, and tonight Lexa planned to be somewhere between the first and the second but if she spent all night dawdling and thinking about the blonde who had made those stitches she’d end up the third. She slid carefully into the narrow sheath of dark fabric, the silk interior cool against her skin as it slunk down over black lace. The back was low enough she could fasten the brief zipper without assistance.

It was difficult to stop her mind wandering where it shouldn’t when even chastising herself just made her brain catch on _Clarke_ and stop there, caught up in an endless loop of memories, and playing and replaying every second of their meeting on the roof. She had hoped she’d get over it, but two weeks and still her thoughts drifted to the doctor in every free moment and a few not-so-free. Luckily, paying attention in business meetings was the last thing anyone expected her to do, but Lexa generally preferred to fake day-dreaming while actually paying rigorous attention so that she could discuss matters with Titus later. This week she’d missed an entire presentation concocting scenarios in which she might get to the see other woman again, none of which were at all sensible. She’d already taken a huge risk just by going to the hospital, and while she had gotten lucky that Clarke was too concerned with treating her injury to turn her in or pay much attention to her identity, that wasn’t something she could risk a second time. Especially not for a girl, no matter who she was or how pretty she’d still looked even in blood-stained scrubs with dark circles under her eyes and messy hair.

Lexa’s weakness for blondes was literally world famous. Someone had even once held a yacht party in her honor (what she’d done that deserved to be honored she had no idea) where she and the host had been the only non-blondes allowed on board. The press had eaten it up and still brought it up whenever she was seen with a blonde and sometimes when she wasn’t. Mostly that obsession was just part of the image she’d deliberately constructed, and it was something she’d moved away from in recent years anyway, but if she was honest with herself she’d originally chosen blondes instead of any other sort of woman for a reason.

But this wasn’t the time to wade back into ancient history, and Lexa gave herself a shake as she adjusted the front of the dress, making sure it would stay where she needed it without needing constant attention. Tonight’s event would require her to be on her game. This wasn’t just another pointless gala where she could swan in with a girl in each arm and a glass in each hand and spout whatever inane bullshit she could come up with until it was time to make a conspicuously early exit with her hand on someone’s ass. Her cousin’s engagement party required a more subtle approach, a more moderate level of asshole that she found more difficult to affect.

Finishing touches to her hair and make-up followed. She started to grab her favorite watch from the case, but the Patek Philippe was too subtle, and she set it back down in favor of a larger, gaudier Rolex bracelet, a custom job encrusted with emeralds and with a face stuffed with so many complex dials and indicators it was basically useless. The part she had to play never quite came easily, but it was hardest to keep up around people she actually cared for, and that made the trappings of douchebaggery all the more important. She trailed fingertips down her bare sternum as she looked into the mirror. This would do. Content that she looked tabloid-worthy, Lexa stepped into her heels, tucked her phones into her clutch, and headed out to meet the limo.

* * *

Clarke sighed and leaned closer to the window, one hand braced on the sill and the other flapping a magazine beside her head.

Raven, standing over her bent form with another makeshift fan called the sigh and raised her an outright groan. “Remind me again why you didn’t just come over to my place and use my hairdryer?”

“Are you sure you want me to do that? Because the answer is that you swore to me it was just a blown fuse and you being a brilliant mechanic would have it fixed in, and I quote,” Clarke tipped her head sideways to send a dry look up at her friend through her hair and lifted her non-fanning hand to do air-quotes, “‘ten seconds, at the outside.’”

“You _told_  me it was a blown fuse.”

“No, I told you the outlet sparked and the power went out. You diagnosed it yourself.”

Raven huffed. “You gave me incomplete data. I can only work with what I’m given, Clarke.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Just keep fanning, it’s almost dry enough.”

“You can always stick your head out the window of the cab.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before.” Clarke didn’t need to lift her head for Raven to know she was rolling her eyes.

“Bonus: everyone will be so distracted by your giant Dolly Parton hair they won’t notice you’re overdressed.”

Clarke’s head jerked up to fix Raven with a glare. “You said this dress was fine!”

“Oh my god, I was _joking_ ,” Raven laughed at Clarke’s hair-trigger frustration, “It is fine. Chill, Clarke. It’s just Octavia and Lincoln.”

“Yeah, I know, I just—.” She broke off and let out a heavy breath, gesturing vaguely.

“Haven’t seen many of these people in years. I know, Clarke.” Raven was tempted to try to reassure her more, but it never did much good when Clarke was in her own head, and so instead she put on a teasing smirk. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’re still their princess.”

“Ugh. I really don’t know why we’re friends.”

“Because I’m awesome. Now come on, that’s dry enough to style and I don’t want to miss a minute of that open bar. You know they’re going to have all the good shit.”

Clarke chuckled and straightened up, combing fingers through her hair, and allowed Raven to lead the way back to the bathroom and stand her in front of the mirror to do her hair. For once Clarke was grateful for the window into the building’s central air shaft, which usually just made her wonder which of her neighbors across the way was trying to peek in, because today it let in just enough fading sunlight to work by. She really should have just gone to Raven’s. They both should have known better than to trust the wiring in this building, because Clarke had chosen her apartment for its natural light, charm, and proximity to the hospital, and in exchange had settled for an old building with a negligent landlord.

She made a mental note to lay into him later and make sure she got part of her rent back if it lasted more than a day. The rent was the other reason she’d chosen the place, and she was grateful that Raven hadn’t made a crack about it. Her close friends knew about Clarke’s trust fund, but nobody else was likely to guess because she did her best not to live like someone with a trust fund. She had dipped into it enough to pay for her education, and to be reasonably comfortable and secure when she hadn’t had a salary, but otherwise Clarke made sure that the majority of her income and inheritance were diverted into the philanthropic causes her father had supported and a few more she’d chosen herself. She had so little to do with Polis’s glittering elite these days that despite the uncommon name few people realized she was _that_ Clarke Griffin. Every once in a while someone would put two and two together, or recognize her face, but she’d gotten good at shutting them down, diverting the conversation quickly before too many others caught on and the questions began pouring out.

But tonight, _everybody_  was going to remember, and they were going to realize that they hadn’t seen or heard from Clarke for years and were going to want to know where she’d been hiding. Clarke wasn’t at all shy about standing up for herself, but she still wasn’t looking forward to an entire evening of people smiling fakely while clearly wondering what was wrong with her to send her so far out of their orbit. She snorted, and then noticed Raven looking at her in the mirror and waved a hand.

“Nothing.” Raven lifted an eyebrow at her and Clarke sighed. “I’m still thinking about how obnoxious it’s going to be having to explain what I’ve been doing. I know, I know,” she held up a hand as Raven continued to give her a Look in the mirror, “I’m being ridiculous. Nobody cares, this party is about Octavia and Lincoln, other awesome people will be there, not just the prep school crowd, I _know_. I’m fine, I promise. I’m just getting it all out now before we get there.”

“Good.” It felt a little harsh, and after a moment Raven gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I promise if anyone seems too awful I’ll sweep in and dazzle them long enough for you to make an escape, alright?”

“Deal.”

“Good. Now put your face on, finish up, and I’ll go see how long an Uber is going to be.” She gave Clarke a pat on the ass like they were still coming off a field hockey pitch, and Clarke laughed and opened her makeup drawer.

She had been so busy over the past couple weeks that she’d stopped bothering with eye makeup even on the rare occasion that she woke up with enough time before a shift that she could have, but drawing it on now she had a sudden vision of just continuing to shade further and further out until she had a mask dripping down her cheeks. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought about her run-in with the Commander, or wondered about the woman beneath the paint. Who she was, how she was doing, whether she’d at least taken the antibiotics, what she’d say to a team-up when Clarke finally tracked her down.

While she was gratified when the Commander’s reign of terror had been put on hold for a couple days after The Roof Incident, the rest of Polis’s population had made sure to pick up the slack and the ER had been as busy as ever. Clarke had managed to convince her boss that she needed to cut back a little—he’d balked at first, but she’d talked about burn-out and thankfully he valued her and her “potential” (read: her mother's reputation) enough not to risk it—but her new schedule had only just kicked in a couple days ago. With the few evening hours she’d gained Clarke had hit some spots she thought might draw the Commander’s attention, but so far all she’d managed to do was get even less sleep than she had before.

But she’d snuck in a nap this afternoon in preparation for this party, and she was pleased to see that it took only a little careful work to make herself look like a person who got something approaching a healthy amount of rest.

“Three minutes!” Raven called from the living room.

“Got it!” Clarke turned back to put on the finishing touches, and soon the pair were making their way out to the curb and the gleaming black SUV that waited for them there.

“Did you order Fancy Uber just for me?” Clarke asked, raising a brow at Raven as she slid carefully across the bench.

The brunette shrugged. “What can I say, I like to arrive in style.”

Clarke didn’t push the question, but flashed her a smile and reached over to give Raven’s hand a brief squeeze where it rested on the seat between them. A nicer Uber might be a far cry from the private limos that most of tonight’s guests would be arriving in, but it was also a lot better than schlepping in from a yellow cab. Mostly, Clarke just appreciated the thought.

She knew Raven didn’t really understand her nerves, and she couldn’t blame her. Raven had always been on the outside of this world looking in as one of the few scholarship kids at Andover Rice Kenning Academy. Raven being Raven had made the best of it, bulling her way through with sheer force of will and brilliance and personality, but Clarke knew that ARK was a difficult place at the best of times, and that if Raven had ever let herself really care what people there thought of her, she never would have made it out. Not giving a shit about the opinions of Polis’s rich and famous wasn’t just well-deserved contempt, it was self-preservation.

In a small and selfish way, Clarke envied her clarity. She would have liked to say she’d put that world firmly behind her after high school and everything that had happened, and that anyone who didn’t appreciate what she had accomplished and who she had become since could go fuck themselves. And to a certain extent she had, and they could. Clarke could recite Raven’s peptalk by heart, and she didn’t disagree with it. They’d had their fifteen minutes of catching her in the spotlight, tearing her life open and picking around inside, but it was long over. None of these people were to be trusted, they did not deserve her forgiveness, what she’d done hadn’t been easy, what she’d accomplished was worthwhile. She’d meant what she’d said to Raven: she didn’t for a moment regret not choosing a life full of holidays in St. Tropez or closets full of Louboutins.

But what she hadn’t said was that like it or not these people had been her father’s peers, his acquaintances, his business associates, his supporters and rivals. They had watched his rise and they had seen him fall, and she knew that more than a few had secretly been delighted when it came. Jake Griffin had, after all, taken a hard left turn away from the usual path of Polis politicians, and many of the people in the room Clarke was about to walk into had feared and hated him for his refusal to pay his dues and grovel before the usual altars of power.

Clarke knew that her father would have been proud of her, but lately it never quite felt like enough. His legacy should’ve been more than tabloid fodder or a tragic footnote, and she hated seeing the people who had probably killed him get to think that they’d won. Clarke wanted them to still tremble when they heard the name Griffin, and she was afraid that after meeting her tonight they’d sigh in relief instead and go back to whispering behind their hands like they had the last time she’d seen most of them.

But the past was the past, she was what she was, and unless she was prepared to announce to the world that she’d become a masked vigilante and was coming for them, there wasn’t much Clarke could do about anyone’s opinion right now. She reminded herself of that as the SUV eased around a corner, the bulbs in streetlamps and store windows flickering on ahead of them as the last gleams of sunset off the high-rises faded. Another few blocks, and the car pulled into the line of vehicles dropping off in front of the hotel. Clarke took a breath deep enough to make Raven glance over at her, and after a long exhale, she put on a smile and gave her friend a nod.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

The tumbler dangled from her fingertips, and Lexa knew that the man standing in front of her laughing uncomfortably at her obscene joke was worrying that any second it would slip out of her hold and get expensive mezcal all over his Ferragamos. She let her wrist dangle at an even more precarious angle and enjoyed watching his arm twitch with the urge to reach out and take the glass away from her. He didn’t dare. Nobody ever did. She considered letting it shatter at his feet in punishment for being more concerned about shoes than the fact that the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company was a stupid, lecherous drunk. Instead, she smiled vacantly and turned toward her companion without really looking at her.

“Melissa—”

“Melinda.”

“Baby, why don’t you go help Mr. Montgomery get another drink. He’s looking like he needs a drink, isn’t he?”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary—” Montgomery protested even as Melinda peeled herself reluctantly away from Lexa’s side to rise and take his arm. The man had been looking for an exit, but he’d also been trying to stay sober and away from beautiful young women exactly like the one now prepared to guide him away. Lexa might have felt bad about pressuring him, except she knew he was only avoiding alcohol to stay sharp for a meeting with his Russian mob employers later, and only avoiding being seen with beautiful young women because he knew his wife was gunning for a divorce and he was trying to avoid it because of the financial scrutiny it would involve. Siccing Melinda on him was a long shot, but it was worth a try and at the very least it would probably make him easier to follow later. She’d had all she could take of the other woman’s giggling, anyway. Lexa reached out to give her ass a pat and smirked at the noise she made.

“Get him something nice. On me.”

Her date tittered and led Mr. Montgomery away, the accountant muttering confusedly about it being an open bar. Lexa turned back to the rest of the party.

The event was spread across several levels of the tiered gardens on the hotel roof, and since her entrance, Lexa had been holding court in the sunken seating area in one corner of the first. It fit both her purposes: it let her lounge, all louche posture, legs crossed at the knee so her stupidly expensive shoe could dangle as carelessly as her stupidly expensive drink. The couch allowed her to keep women curled up fawning at her side like she was Hugh Hefner or a cheap Bond villain, but it also gave her a surprisingly clear line of sight to the open central staircase that was the only access between the levels. She had spent an hour or two here, sipping artisanal liquor and playing drunk for those who for whatever reason still came to curry favor with her, all while still being able to keep an eye on everyone coming and going.

She knew she should probably get up and mingle. Her late arrival combined with her camping in a corner meant that she hadn’t even greeted the happy couple yet and no matter how she dreaded that, it needed to be done. Lexa Woods showing up late to her cousin’s engagement and not bothering to say hello for a couple hours was par for the course at this point. Not bothering to say hello _at all_  might draw attention, and she didn’t want Lincoln having to answer questions about some imagined feud between them. Bad enough he was still getting asked about the “actual” feud.

This was the second reason she was dreading going to seek out her cousin and his fiancée. Lincoln was endlessly civil and understanding, far more than Lexa deserved. Octavia Blake, on the other hand, had never heard the words ‘civil’ or ‘understanding’ in her life. Lexa couldn’t blame her for holding a grudge, and sometimes she perversely enjoyed Octavia’s open hatred of her. It was a rare moment of refreshing honesty compared to the ass-kissing and double-talk that usually filled her days.

But it had been a long and frustrating couple of weeks, and (this was the first reason for her reluctance) Lexa already felt guilty about having to spend the night pretending she didn’t give a shit about Lincoln’s happiness. Tonight no matter how much she deserved to be torn into about any number of things the thought of taking it all with a laugh was exhausting. She let Titus’s words echo in her head, let them clear her mind like a mantra, forcing out all other thoughts. This was who she needed to be in order to do what she needed to do. She turned away from the low glass wall and the city lights below and prepared to move.

She got as far as standing but that was it before the sight of a familiar blonde descending the stairs stopped Lexa’s feet and her heart.

She had seen more than her fair share of beautiful women in her life, but if Clarke Griffin had looked unfairly pretty on the hospital roof at what was probably near her worst, then here, now, at her best, she was an absolute knock-out. Her hair fell in loose waves to her shoulders, tawny gold in the party lights. They sparkled off her dress, a pale shade of grey and overlaid with a random pattern of something—Lexa couldn’t be sure from this distance if it was crystal or beading or metallic thread or what, but it shimmered just enough to draw the eye to the way it hugged the curves of her body. While the cap sleeves and almost-boat-neck were relatively modest, the dress ended just on the high side of mid-thigh and Lexa could have sworn Clarke’s legs went on not just for days but for at least the full flight of stairs, heeled sandals extending the line of them even further. Most women in attendance had managed to look either classy or sexy, but Clarke straddled the line effortlessly.

Lexa couldn’t tear her eyes away. She couldn’t stop her brain running away with the word ‘straddle,’ either, all the calm certainty she had gathered the moment before lost in a wash of unwanted memory and undeserved imagination.

Someone touched her shoulder and she instinctively yanked away, turning with a cold glare. Kimmy, one of the other girls she had shown up with, was flinching away with a dramatic gasp, and Lexa realized she wasn’t sure whether her heart was hammering like that because she’d been expecting an attack or was just upset at being caught staring at Clarke. She was a little flushed but everyone would assume that was the alcohol, and nobody needed to know about the heat that was still fluttering through her.

Just as well she’d been interrupted; Clarke was exactly the kind of distraction she could not afford right now, and seeing her like this only drove that home. The hospital had been a necessary evil, but interacting with her again was definitely to be avoided, either in disguise or out of it.

She threw back what was left of the liquor she’d been deceptively nursing all night and turned to Kimmy, who was still looking at her expectantly since the gasp had drawn no response. Lexa put on the smirk that had graced the pages of gossip sites the world over. “Just thinking about what I’m going to do to you later,” she lied, looping her arm through the other woman’s. “And it made me thirsty. Let’s hit the bar.” For the first time all night, Lexa needed a drink that wasn’t just for show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this was a longer wait than advertised for a chapter that's ended up being a lot of exposition and set-up and hints. It turns out that when you write chapter 1 on a whim in a single sitting it then takes some time to sit down and figure out all the moving parts that turn it into a real story so you don't joss yourself constantly, and sometimes chapters end up 10k words instead of the 5k you were aiming for and need to become multiple chapters but you can't publish the first one until you're nearly done with the second in case things need to be shifted around. The good news is that Chapter 3 is 80% written and Chapter 4 is outlined. The bad news is that my life just doesn't allow for a regular update schedule, so this is how it's probably going to be. I hope you'll stick with it anyway.
> 
>  **Next time:** Clarke and Lexa face to face, Raven, Bellamy, more backstory, and the first appearance of some of our least-favorite faces.
> 
> If anyone has a good idea for a superhero alias for Clarke, suggest it in the comments or hit me up at whythisone @ tumblr! I'm drawing as much of a blank as she is.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a prompt on tumblr somewhere that requested basically Lexa as Daredevil and Clarke as Claire Temple and I started to write that and then was like, but wouldn't it be cool if Clarke was also Daredevil? And Lexa was actually a little bit more the Punisher? But also Bruce Wayne? And who does that make Jessica Jones?? So who knows, this is kind of just a vigilante mash-up, I guess. 
> 
> A commenter spotted it: the fic title is from the song [Bloodsport](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheklX5csjc) by Raleigh Ritchie and if I follow-through with chapter titles, they will be too.
> 
> I'm whythisone @ tumblr if you want to talk about it / maybe at some point I'll figure out how to put together a graphic and a post about it or something.


End file.
